Diagrams of a Universal System of Construction in

y Reyner Banham in saying: “we can ask ourselves if it was precisely in the design of details the
responsibility for the disaster” (Banham 1986, pp. 28-29).
For Kenneth Frampton, instead, the failure was related with lack of funding and socio- cultural
conditions:
It is licit to suppose that two factors had contributed in a decisive way to the failure of the
General Panel System; the first related to the socio- cultural problem of ‘accessibility’;
the second coming from the derived lack of adequate funding. Wachsmann avoided any
iconographic element commonly associated to the image of a house
(Frampton 1988, p. 43).
For Frampton, the reasons of failure were not related in any sense to the technology or the
complexity of details. It was rather connected to the struggle between modern architectural
expression and people’s social expectations. For him, its failure was a real loss since a generalized
adoption of the General Panel House would have provided the American suburbia levels of
urbanity much more elevated than those achieved in the last four decades (1988, p. 43). Nothing
could be more distant from Banham’s understanding, when proposing that the General Panel House
was “…a dwelling- concept of the utmost banality” (Banham 1996, p. 53).
In one way or another, the failure of the system is not in doubt. It was seen sometimes as a problem
of funding and expression (Frampton), or as a matter of technical sophistication (Herbert); or as the
natural outcome of a solution coming from an intellectual attitude that was fundamentally wrong
(Banham). Interestingly, the debate about the system seems to remain unsolved, as well as
Wachsmann’s reputation is still a matter of dispute. A recent issue of “Detail Magazine” (2001) has
portrayed Wachsmann and his General Panel System as “enormously successful in the post- war
construction period” (Detail 2001, v. 41 Nº 4, p. 627).
REPRESENTATION AND TECHNOLOGY
From the systems of representation developed by Wachsmann in the form of an Erection Manual
and 13 symbolic diagrams, it becomes clear that the General Panel was a modal variation of a more
ambitious ideal. He searched for a universal system of construction in which the Erection Manual
was part of the reconfiguration of architecture by means of assemblage.
The ultimate goal was to create a system of construction based in a total and universal compatibility
of elements. The size and shape of the final building had to correspond to the combination of
elements throughout simple numerical operations, by adding, subtracting, dividing or multiplying
the measure of the initial unit acknowledged as the module. Therefore, finding the coherence of
measurement for any possible component was the fundamental task of technological research,
160